As the following quote from McTighe and Wiggins (2008) suggests, there may be a common core factor contributing to a teacher’s ineffectiveness that we need to identify first in order to answer such questions:
We contend that the lack of a more precise job description for teachers, along with concomitant expectations and appropriate appraisals, unwittingly interferes with desired school reforms. To state the problem more dramatically, we contend that many hardworking teachers actually harbor misunderstandings about what their job requires, and that many educational leaders unintentionally abet these misunderstandings by not confronting them or providing clearer expectations. In sum, there needs to be far greater clarity about a teacher's mission.
Over the years, we have observed countless examples of teachers who, though industrious and well meaning, act in ways that suggest that they misunderstand their jobs. It may seem odd or even outrageous to say that many teachers misconceive their obligations. But we believe this is the case. Nor do we think this is surprising or an aspersion on the character or insight of teachers. We believe that teachers, in good faith, act on an inaccurate understanding of the role of “teacher” because they imitate what they experienced, and their supervisors rarely make clear that the job is to cause understanding, not merely to march through the curriculum and hope that some content will stick. So what is the job of a teacher? How are the job expectations made clear, and how are job requirements reflected in school life, supervision, and evaluation?
In other words, despite their good intentions, teachers may bring a preconceived notion of the job duties, but the system seldom asks teachers to gain a better understanding of the mission of teaching. We can know the duties a teacher is expected to perform without understanding a teacher’s mission. However, if we know a teacher’s mission, we would expect his or her tasks to be shaped by that mission. If the current system does not inform teachers of the ways in which the role of teachers has changed from one-size-fits-all instruction toward differentiated instruction, it should not surprise us that the result if the teaching methods of traditional take-it-or-leave-it classrooms of the past are perpetuated. Simply put, the system fails our teachers long before any teacher fails his or her students.
This way of framing things should be liberating for teachers who have struggled in isolation and have tripled their efforts to meet student needs, only to find themselves wondering continually if they are on the right track. Such teachers continue to labor under the misconceptions McTighe and Wiggins (2008) contend will lead teachers down the wrong path. This leads to a challenging question in education: How can we best support teachers to make changes when they are still formulating various aspects of their teaching style, but are emulating the traditional one that they themselves experienced?
A type of reform double jeopardy develops. The first challenge is identifying what is in a teacher’s “toolbox,” and the second aspect is discerning a teacher’s willingness to consider adding the appropriate new tools. In other words, not having acquired the full complement of tools for reaching all students is one thing, but a teacher’s disbelief that any new or varied tools are needed is quite problematic because it effectively halts further exploration. Unfortunately, for many the tools believed to be missing tend to fall into the category of more traditional methods. A classic example is for teachers in their first or second year to seek professional development for classroom and behavior management techniques. Teachers may unwittingly be addressing behaviors that are symptoms of instructional, curricular, or assessment-related causes. The result is that teachers may become even more entrenched in methods that only work for some students. Teachers may be novices or experts or somewhere in between, but the real question is where they are heading in their growth as professionals. In what ways are teachers addressing any misconceptions they may have had when they entered the profession? In what areas do we perceive a need to grow? Are we emulating a pedagogical style that worked for us as students, or are we looking for ways to differentiate for the needs of students? As McTighe and Wiggins (2008) suggest, administrators and the system in general have done teachers few favors by helping to propel teachers even further down the wrong track.